


you got me singing curses in my head and on repeat

by postfixrevolution



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben "I have a bad feeling about this but fuck if I'm going to listen to that" Solo, Ben is a Jedi Knight, F/M, Going undercover, Humor, Master Spy Rose Tico, Pre-Relationship, Rey is Dark Side and master of the Knights of Ren, Reylo Valentines Exchange 2018, Reylovalentines2018, Roleswap AU, Some crude language, Stormtrooper Finn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postfixrevolution/pseuds/postfixrevolution
Summary: Jedi Knight Ben Solo is sent to infiltrate the First Order as a radar technician, accompanied by Rose Tico, technician turned spy, in hopes of finding the rumored map to his uncle, Luke Skywalker.Having a master spy and Jedi Knight undercover on one of the most dangerous First Order hubs in the galaxy sounds like a really good idea, actually, but the radar technician detail somehow ruins it all when Ben's awe-inspiring technological illiteracy catches the attention of the FO's fearsome Master of the Knights of Ren, Kira Ren.





	you got me singing curses in my head and on repeat

**Author's Note:**

> For [lemika96](lemika96.tumblr.com) on Tumblr! Happy Valentines Day, love, (and Lunar New Year, too!) and I hope I did your wonderful prompt justice! I'm sorry it's so late, too, orz....

“Hand me the calcinator.”

Ben blanches. 

_ Kriff _ . 

He stares at the toolbox in front of him, eyes searching desperately for any tool that might look remotely like it should be called a calcinator. Those pointy things with the wishbone shaped handle are definitely pliers, and he knows screwdrivers and wrenches well enough, but he can’t remember how a fucking  _ calcinator _ looks for the life of him. 

Sucking in a slow breath, Ben tries to remember what his partner had told him as they flew to this god-forsaken Star Destroyer just days earlier, steadfast and determined to steal First Order secrets and be out before the week ended. Rose Tico was a master mechanic before she dropped it all to become a spy for the Resistance, and he swears to his mother’s obscure Resistance base in the Outer Rim and back that he listened very attentively to her explanations. It’s just all blanking, coincidentally and simultaneously, and he gawks at the mess of tools like they all just grew legs and began to dance. He really hopes Rose is doing better than he is.

An impatient hand snapping in front of his face snaps him back to reality. 

“Head out of hyperspace, Matt,” his superior demands testily. “I need that calcinator!”

“Uh.” 

The woman throws him a dirty look from over her shoulder.

“Yes.” he responds stiltedly. “Yeah. I’m getting it… The calcinator.”

With narrowed eyes, she turns back to the panel. Cursing internally with a fluency that would make his partner proud, he rifles through the toolbox, grabbing a tool he doesn’t know the name of and praying to the Force that it’s the right one. His superior takes it without a second glance, bringing it up to her project only to stop cold when she brings it before her. Ben freezes. He can feel the way the Force begins to boil malevolently around her.

“This isn’t the calcinator, Matt.”

He reaches gingerly over her shoulder, plucking it from her hands and turning back to the stand that holds the box. Just as Ben comes face to face with it, a stormtrooper comes barrelling past, clipping him on the shoulder and sending him crashing into the small stand and promptly to the ground, spilling tools all over the polished black floors. He sees something that looks like it could be a calcinator and grabs at it blindly. Peering over his shoulder, he sees the senior mechanic glaring down on him with hands on her hips, and he hands her the tool with a shaky smile.

“Here’s your calcinator?”

She swipes it from his hands, looking thoroughly unimpressed, and returning to her work without a beat. Ben releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Even Jedi training wasn’t this difficult.

“You better start cleaning that up too, Matt.”

With a tired nod, he turns back to the spilled mess on the floor, picking up all the scattered tools and loading them methodically back into the box. The stormtrooper that had barrelled in to him earlier is long gone, the bastard, but another rounds the corner he had just disappeared behind, a colored shoulder pauldron denoting higher rank displayed for all to see.

Common sense dictates that Ben scoot out of the way in order to avoid another potential collision, but his general annoyance at the collective stormtrooper population keeps him rooted stubbornly in place. He takes his time loading tools back into the box, not noticing how the senior trooper’s footsteps had fallen silent until his officer taps him with her foot, jerking her head insistently upward. Ben looks up to find the senior trooper in question staring him down.

“Is everything alright, technician?”

Ben decides that this could go two ways. Peacefully is the ideal, but the trooper that had crashed into him earlier was far from peaceful. He’s admittedly bitter.

“Not really,” he says matter-of-factly. He’s about to elaborate when his senior officer cuts him off, making him thoroughly regret attempting to start shit at all. Uncle Luke always  _ did _ say he let his emotions get the best of him too often, but it’s been an admittedly long while since he’s regretted it this much.

“You can say that again!” she exclaims, hands on her hips. Ben knows from experience that nothing ever ends well when she does that. “Do you  _ know _ how many tries it took for mister genius here to find me a calcinator? Even you know what a calcinator looks like, don’t you?”

“That cylindrical one there,” the trooper says simply, as if it was common  _ kriffing  _ knowledge. “Yellow handle, triple pronged.”

Ben cycles vicariously through his mental databank of curses as his superior glares down at him.

“I ought to have you on my team instead,” she laments, clucking her tongue sadly. Ben finds himself somewhat in agreement, if only because he never wanted to touch another toolbox again in his lifetime. “While you’re here, you mind putting in a word with the big bosses for me? Matt here needs a crash course before I can work with him without giving myself an ulcer.”

“I do  _ not _ \--”

“Matt? Matt the radar technician?”

Ben presses his lips together. The stormtrooper looks directly at him. He hurriedly shovels the rest of the tools into the box and stands up. The armored figure is much less intimidating when Ben stands half a head taller than him. It’s no wonder Rose had insisted that he couldn’t be a trooper. They’re somehow smaller than he had imagined.

“Yes,” he confirms slowly, holding the toolbox awkwardly in front of him. “I’m Matt.”

“Well  _ that _ makes my job easier,” the trooper mutters. Ben unfortunately doesn’t get the chance to ask for ask for context, as the trooper barrels verbally right on past him. It seems all stormtroopers were always in  _ some _ kind of rush. “Your presence has been requested by higher management, Matt the radar technician. If your officer doesn’t mind continuing without you--”

“Take him. Please.”

“Hey--”

Ben’s officer snatches the toolbox out of his hands, practically shoving him at the trooper. A gloved hand takes him by the elbow, nudging him into a brisk stride right behind him. Ben doesn’t even get the chance to wish his superior officer a goodbye--not that he would have used the chance gracefully anyway. He considers the various obscene gestures that Poe had been all too fluent in and eager to teach him, but maturely decides to make none.

“Where are we going?” Ben ventures. Something about the militaristic composure he’d seen from all the troopers thus far doesn’t make him expect a detailed answer, and he is left unsurprisingly disappointed.

“Higher management.”

Ben presses his lips together, humming in flat acknowledgement. He contemplates the various other positions he could have gone undercover as while the stormtrooper leads him Force knows where, and is in the midst of postulating that he would be quite good as a prison sentry--well accustomed to looking falsely alert as he used the interested guise to meditate instead--when the trooper suddenly stops. Ben’s nose slams into the back of his helmet. The white duraplastic is harder than it looks.  _ Kriff _ , it hurts.

His voice comes out nasally as he rubs his smarting nose. Ben looks around curiously.

As a radar technician, he hardly ever left the communications deck, so this part of the ship is entirely foreign to him. If he reaches out with the Force, he can feel Rose far on the other side, probably fitting effortlessly in among the senior munitions officers. She’s so much fainter than usual, swallowed up by a buzzing pinpoint of energy just somewhere past the door in front of him. He’d felt it in passing on the ship, but never as close as he does now.

“Where are we?” he asks, lips pulling into a frown. 

The trooper turns his head ever so slightly back, and Ben can’t fully explain how he knows, but he can practically  _ feel _ the masked man smirking. He has a bad feeling about this.

“Like I said,” he tells him, rapidly keying in a password to the door’s holocontrols. He steps aside as the door hisses open, and in the very center of the room, a girl dressed head to toe in black robes. The chrome-lined helmet that sits beside her is much more concerning. Ben feels his blood run cold.

“Higher management.”

_ Fuck _ .

.

Kira Ren’s eyes are honey brown, Ben notices as she looks up, and unfairly not as harsh and evil as they really ought to be. She switches off her holopad as she hears the two of them enter, and with the cerulean glow and dramatic shadows of it off her face, her features prove much less sharp than they had first appeared. She looks pretty, if anything, with a regal nose and freckles dusting her cheeks like desert sand. Ben tries not to think about this new information too much.

“FN-2187,” she notes. “And who is this?”

The stormtrooper--FN-2187--steps forward. Ben can already guarantee that he will try his hardest to  _ very  _ maturely not remember the trooper’s designation and ultimately fail; his memory apparently doesn’t work for tools, but he can still recall names of senators he and his mother had passed in a hallway  _ once _ when he was only seven.

“The radar technician, as you requested, my liege.”

Kira’s eyes shift over to Ben, and he remains ramrod stiff, clamping furiously down on his Force presence as she looks at him. He doesn’t need to be in tune with the Force to feel honey brown eyes tracing over his form, sparing no urgency as she sizes him up. 

He shouldn’t be detectable, but she is the exact opposite. Her Force presence  _ drowns _ him. Ben swallows thickly. What he wouldn’t give to be far,  _ far _ away from the fearsome Ren and her eyes the color of the sugary, sweet honey that his mother always mixed into her tea at age-old Republic Senate meetings. Kriff, he’s feeling thoroughly fucked right now. 

“Interesting,” she says. It snaps Ben back to his senses.

“Huh?”

She doesn’t elaborate.

“2187, you’re free to go. Thank you.”

FN-2187 inclines his head. 

“Of course,” he responds dutifully. He rounds about on one heel, making for the exit, and Ben has to physically stop himself from reaching for the man, pleading him to both wait and get him out of here. Even if it meant going to the gods-forsaken crash course his senior officer had mentioned. Or even back to the grumpy woman herself, sass and general aura of furious annoyance be damned. 

Unfortunately, Ben does not stop FN-2187 from leaving, and the door slides shut behind him. Its resounding thud echoes, and he can’t help the feeling of truly being trapped in the rathar’s den. Eyes the color of honey fly back to look at him, bright and anything but the cold gaze of the galaxy’s most feared warrior, and Ben freezes to his spot. 

He isn’t in the rathar’s den, he realizes. He’s somewhere far worse. 

“Somehow, you aren’t what I expected,” Kira comments offhandedly. Ben doesn’t move from his spot beside the door. “Sit.” 

Without batting an eye, Kira sends a chair flying across the room, catching him behind the knees and sending him careening backward against the hard plastic seat. His heartbeat skyrockets, adrenaline flooding his veins as he’s dragged to Kira’s table. The chair screeches to a halt suddenly, and Ben all but lurches forward, an inelegant string of curses bursting past his lips. 

_ Kriff _ . 

For some reason, the display prompts a soft snort from Kira. It’s a sound unbefitting the Master of the Knights of Ren, Ben thinks, but it’s somehow perfect for the pretty girl before him. Wait.  _ Pretty _ . He swears, internally this time, and with much more length and fervor. Ben really needs to drop that word from his vocabulary, especially where Kira Ren is concerned.

He glances up at her. She is looking at him curiously, the beginnings of an amused smirk pulling up at her lips. Very not pretty. 

“Why am I here?” Ben blurts, if only to veer his own train of thought far, far away from Kira’s lips. “I thought personnel were handled by General Hux.”

“They are,” Kira shrugs. “I don’t care for Hux’s men so long as they don’t bother me. But after hearing about the infamous radar technician with a complaints file so long that hearing his name makes Hux turn absolutely puce, I was...curious.”

“I’m here...because Hux hates me?”

“I just had to see the man single-handedly destroying Hux’s previously flawless hiring record,” she says pleasantly. “I have to say I’m a bit disappointed,” she continues contemplatively, “You don’t really look like a fool.”

“Uh.”

“Maybe a bit eye-catching, if anything,” she mutters absently, so quiet that Ben can’t help but feel like he was really not meant to hear it, but his heartbeat trips over itself nonetheless. “So blond…”

“So,” he begins cautiously, “I’m not in trouble?

“Not with me, no. I can’t guarantee your situation with Hux, though. He seems a standard second away from ejecting you in the nearest escape pod.” The idea is funny enough to make her smile, and Ben feels queasy at the conflicting rapture and anxiety that churn in his stomach. He looks at her closer and notices the saber clipped to her belt, the faint scar creeping up along her neck and ending just above her jawline. For how breathtakingly she smiles, there is no denying Kira’s fearsome potential. 

“Oh. I’d, uh, rather he didn’t.”

Her gaze flickers back to him.

“He’s far less irritating when he’s agonizing over you, so I agree. And while I can’t change his mind for you,” she begins, standing up, “I can offer you something else.”

Ben looks up at her as she stands. Kira is unexpectedly small, just a head taller than him with him seated, but her full height provides much more for Ben to  _ not _ stare at, which he definitely does. His eyes remain trained on her face, and Kira Ren does  _ not _ have long, muscled legs or bare, toned shoulders, dusted with the same freckles that form constellations across her cheeks. 

Kriff, he’s so bad at lying to himself.

“You need a teacher,” Kira says. 

“M-me? Why me?”

“Why you?” she echoes, tilting her head at him. “There’s something inside of you,” she says softly, eyes narrowing as she scrutinizes him. He can feel her reaching out with the Force and shrinks back, pulse skyrocketing. “I can feel it. I can’t say what it is, or where it’s coming from, but you need help. I could be your teacher.”

“You? But you’re--”

“Not allowed to know about machinery because I swing around a saber and use the Force?” she finishes for him, scoffing lightly. His initial thought is  _ yes _ , but then he remembers FN-2187 casually knowing exactly how a calcinator looks and rethinks that statement. Does  _ everyone _ on this forsaken ship know more about machinery than he does? It would be just his fucking luck. 

“No,” he amends quickly. “You’re…You’re Kira Ren. And I’m just a radar technician.”

“You’re no one,” she agrees, “But not to me, for some strange reason. I want to know more about you.”

Ben blinks, the words taking a moment to sink in. When they finally do, he feels his face grow hot. 

“I-- I. Um.”

Kriff, he sounds like a flustered, stuttering mess. Kira looks at him curiously, lips pulling up into a small smirk. Her honey brown eyes glint with amusement, and Ben finds that it’s a terribly good look on her. 

Kira walks over to his side, leaning an arm on his shoulder. She’s criminally close, her breath just barely brushing over the shell of his ear, and Ben feels his soul quite literally leave his body. 

“You know, you’re not really in a position to be denying any technical help, Matt.”

Ben bites at the inside of his cheek, sucking in a slow breath. His heart doesn’t beat any slower for it. Turning his head gingerly to the side, he comes face to face with freckled cheeks and long eyelashes, close enough that he can see each individual strand. Their eyes meet, and an abrupt, “ _ Oh _ .” tumbles past Ben’s lips. 

Kira flinches at the soft sound, suddenly aware of their closeness, and scrambles back, lips pressed tightly together. She clears her throat awkwardly, but the only thing Ben manages to fixate on is the dusty pink blush coloring her cheeks. Force, why is she so kriffing  _ pretty _ ?

She holds her head high, eyes averted somewhere on the opposite side of the room.

“So?” she asks briskly.

“Huh?”

Kira glances at him from the corner of her eyes, and Ben can feel the way they linger on his face. She licks her lips before responding.

“My offer,” she elaborates. Ben turns his head to look at her. 

She’s facing pointedly away, chin tilted defiantly upward. It was an innocent enough proposition, but Rose would likely fly into a panic if she knew just how closely he was flirting with danger by even considering it. Not that he would consider this mess of a situation flirting. Nor did he plan on flirting with said danger in any conceivable way in the future, either. No planned enemy fraternization whatsoever, but at least Ben lets his gaze linger, if only for a few seconds more.

“I think,” he starts slowly, “I think I would like that.” 

More than he wants to admit, and much,  _ much _ more than he will be telling his partner until they are at least half a galaxy away from the First Order, with their stolen information in tow.

Kira glances over at him, lips parted with a pleasantly surprised  _ oh _ , and Ben gazes breathlessly back. He’s got a  _ terrible _ feeling about this, but fuck if that’s going to stop him now. Her honey brown eyes are practically alight, and she looks like his next worst, most beautiful mistake. 

However long he and Rose end up staying on this ship, Ben already knows that it’ll never be enough.


End file.
